Remote controlled unmanned aerial vehicles, such as quadcopters, are known. Aerial vehicles continue to grow in popularity for both their commercial applications as well as recreational uses by hobbyists.
The ability of remote controlled aerial vehicles to quickly traverse space and to access places that a user cannot provides for many useful applications. However, a remote controlled aerial vehicle must, in general, maintain communicative contact with a remote controller, held by the user. A loss of connection between a remote controlled aerial vehicle and its remote controller can be catastrophic. Without user control, a remote controlled aerial vehicle may crash or may otherwise be lost. Thus, the utility of an aerial vehicle is constrained by the effective communication range of the receivers and transmitters in the remote controller and aerial vehicle. Therefore, an aerial vehicle must have antennas capable of reliably transmitting and receiving signals to and from its remote controller at a wide range of distances and at different relative orientations.
One conventional antenna for an aerial vehicle is an external antenna, such as a whip antenna. Whip antenna are relatively simple to implement and provide an omnidirectional radiation pattern, but are generally considered aesthetically displeasing. Furthermore, an external antenna can easily be damaged and may even collide with objects, such as tree branches, during flight, potentially leading to a crash. Thus, antennas which are internal to the aerial vehicle are advantageous. However, the internal antennas conventionally used by aerial vehicles often take up too much space within the aerial vehicle and/or do not have a suitably omnidirectional radiation pattern.